


Love, Callum

by soapswalford



Category: EastEnders (TV), Love Simon (2018)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:55:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22132906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soapswalford/pseuds/soapswalford
Summary: An au of ballum x love, simon where it's basically the story of love, simon but written in Walford as Ben and Callum. Basically just me combining my favourite soap ship with my favourite movie. For this Ben, Callum, Lola, Jay and Leo are college kids around the age of 17-18.
Relationships: Callum "Halfway" Highway/Ben Mitchell
Comments: 1
Kudos: 25





	Love, Callum

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for how bad this is! I don't usually write fics but I really wanted to write this one so enjoy!

I’m just like you.

For the most part my life is totally normal.

My dad was the shy, nerdy guy in high school with glasses and braces till he was 18.

My mum however, well she was the opposite. She was the most popular girl in school as I hear, all the boys swooning over her apparently. So really I couldn’t tell you how my parents ended up together, but I suppose I should be glad they did.

Then there’s my sister who I’ve grown to love as I’ve gotten older. Her cooking tests that sometimes though I mean, who wants to eat cupcakes with half the sugar that’s actually required?

And my friends are the best group of people I've ever met. There’s Jay who is the laid back, slightly quieter one who finds it hard to crack a smile at the best of times, then there’s Lola who has the most out there, brave fashion sense I've come across but somehow still manages to pull it off. There’s also Whitney. I’ve known her since we were kids and we’ve been best friends ever since. I feel like I could talk to her about almost anything. Oh, and there’s Ben. Ben Mitchell. He’s the bad boy, probably doing something illegal one of the group. Can’t help but love him for it though.

So like I said, I'm just like you.

I have a totally, perfectly normal life.

Except I have one huge secret.

-

**56 days till Summer**

“Callum you’re gonna be late!” Still half asleep, I groan as I realise my mum is shouting me from downstairs. It was Monday morning and to tell you the truth, I didn’t want to face another week of school again. Summer was way too far away for my liking and I had a million exams before it. The next few weeks can’t go quick enough.

“Coming!” I yell back, the words scratching in my throat as I realise how drained I feel. _A cold, again?_ I slide out of bed, dragging the duvet half off with me as I thud on the floor, my feet pressed against the cold surface of my wooden bedroom floor. I head to my wardrobe and throw on the same old outfit as last week, a white t-shirt with coloured stripes horizontally across, some black jeans that are definitely way past their time and a grey zip up hoodie that I got on sale a couple of months ago. As you can tell, I’m not the fashion icon of the school, I leave that bit to Lola.

I realise I’ve taken far too long as I stand in the mirror staring at my outfit wondering if it’s socially acceptable these days to wear the same outfit twice in a week. I check my new, but cracked phone (I’m just not very good at keeping things safe, hence me dropping my phone on the floor three times since I got it a month ago) and see that it’s 5 minutes until I’m supposed to meet Whitney at college. I run downstairs faster than I think I've ever ran, grabbed my mum’s newly made and slightly burnt piece of toast which I'm sure she’ll shout at me for later and sprint out the door.

7 minutes passed and only slightly late I arrived at the doors of college. I see Whitney stood at the same place she does every morning without fail, just tucked behind the right door hoping to avoid anyone that isn’t the 5 people she actually likes. I know this because she’s told me before and to be honest, I can’t blame her. The rest of college are the most annoying, self-centered, bitchy people I think I’ve ever met. I mean seriously, do I look like I care that Keanu slept with your girlfriend while you were at football practice?

I walk sheepishly to the doors, hood up, headphones in and ignoring most people I come across. I finally get to where Whitney is and give her a hug.

“You are exactly 3 minutes late Halfway!” That was her nickname for me. It stemmed from my surname Highway, I don’t know exactly how but it just did and she’s called me it ever since.

“Sorry I couldn’t decide on an outfit!” I smirked back.

She laughed as we headed properly into college and into first period of drama. All of us including Ben were in drama. He wasn’t sure what to take so we told him to as a joke and he took it seriously, a year later and here we are! As you can imagine he’s the class clown who can’t take anything seriously and is most definitely gonna fail but I love him for it. At least it saves the class from being a literal living hell with the most uninteresting teacher in the world.

“Alright Halfway my son!” I heard Jay call out as I strolled slowly into the classroom. Yep, Jay calls me that too. And Lola. And Ben. And probably most the college when I’m not there.

We walked over to where they were all sat, Ben being on time for the first time this term. “Ready for another 2 hours of my favourite lesson!” Ben chirps up sarcastically once me and Whit have taken our ‘assigned’ seats as the tutor calls them, but really half the class just sit where they fancy.

“Oh don’t lie you love getting to be dramatic when you aren’t in an actual police interview room!” Everyone laughs at Jay. I already felt miles better than I did an hour ago.

-

2 hours passed and drama was over. It was actually a pretty decent lesson, me and Ben got to work together on a piece we’ve started creating for the exam (I say we, Ben just comes up with any ideas where he gets to die so he can lie there for most the play). It was good though, I enjoyed working with him. We got on really well ever since we met really. He went to our high school but we didn’t become close until the last year because as you can imagine, we were opposite ends of the spectrum. He was the same, slightly criminal bad boy who didn’t give two fucks about his exams, and I was the boy who went home and studied for over 5 hours each night for one paper. But somehow we bonded and I’m so glad that we did.

-

It had come to the end of the day. We only had drama and psychology that day which I was happy about, no way did I have the energy in me to sit through maths retake. Reason 1867 why I wish I’d revised harder for maths right there sat in that one lesson.

Me, Whitney and Ben walked rapidly out of college wanting to get out that place as quick as we could.

“Shit day ay?” Ben was the first to break the comfortable silence we found ourselves in whilst walking up the bank out of college.

“Eh I dunno, it was alright” I replied tiredly.

“Yeah that’s only because you got to work with the drama expert here!” Ben said proudly whilst raising his hand to point at himself, his usual cockiness shining through on his smiling face.

“You wish, you can’t even hold still in a freeze frame!” Whitney shouted dramatically loud. We all erupted in laughter as we stumbled through the busy streets of East London to get to our houses. We all lived close to each other, our streets were basically connected so we always found ourselves walking to Ben’s first, then Whitney’s and finally I’d walk to my house alone every evening. It felt like a tradition at this point.

-

Once we had arrived at Ben’s house and he’d gone in, me and Whit began walking without any hurry to her house which was just round the corner. We stayed mostly in a non-awkward silence besides the occasional little chat about the day, or about what subjects we had the day after. It took us only a few minutes to get to Whit’s and before you knew it I had my hood back up, headphones in walking to my house.

The sky was a vibrant blue as few clouds surfaced above me, it really did feel like summer was already here. I found myself daydreaming about all sorts, what I was having for dinner that night, if I'd finished by assignments and-

I looked across the road. My thoughts emptied. All I could think was, wow. Stood there was a bloke, probably around 6 foot tall wearing the tightest fitting, white t-shirt which complimented his perfectly built muscles like you wouldn’t believe. I could just about make out his ocean blue eyes which sparkled in the rays of sun bouncing down onto his flawlessly tanned skin. He was, perfect.

Oh god.

I realise what I’m thinking and quickly run, trying not to look too weird but scuttling as fast as I can to my house and upstairs. I must have made it obvious that something was going on because I saw him turn to look at me with a strange expression on his face, to which I simply just replied with probably the most awkward smile I could and carried on running.

I made it to my house, I hear my mum shout my name but my mouth just froze, no words could escape my lips so I took that as a cue to charge up the stairs and into my bedroom. I was stressed. Big time.

I didn’t know what it was, why I was thinking like this. I’m supposed to find girls hot not guys like that’s the whole point! I was always taught growing up to find a nice woman, somebody I can have a laugh with and share my life with, not a bloke. I had to distract myself from these thoughts that were whizzing around in my head like they were on a never ending cycle of misery. I got out my laptop and went through millions of websites questioning I was having these thoughts. A few said they could just be thoughts that come and go that don’t need any attention drawing to them, but most said the same one word.

**Gay.**

I slammed down my laptop lid almost breaking the delicate screen underneath. I can’t be! I’m not allowed to be! My parents and friends and everyone would just laugh at me! These same sentences went round in my head for what felt like hours but must have only been a few minutes.

I decide that enough is enough and I'm not letting these thoughts ruin my evening anymore, so I grab my phone and go on the endless amounts of social media apps I have stored on that one machine in my hand, hoping it would distract my from my own mind.

-

A couple of hours passed. It was now getting misty and dark outside which made it feel more like Halloween than the beginning of summer, and just as I was closing my Twitter app, Whitney’s name comes up on my screen with ‘would like to facetime’ underneath. I press to answer and she has the most surprised, bewildered look on her face as I ask her what’s wrong.

“Have you seen Walford secrets?”

Walford secrets was set up by one of the people in the higher year to “expose people” in her words, but really people use it as a way to take the piss out of someone so it’s really quite a poisonous website that I try to stay away from.

“No.... should I have? Don’t tell me someone’s talking shit about us” I sighed thinking I’d finally got myself dragged in to some kind of drama.

“No no, but look at it! Some guy’s just posted a huge confession and it’s literally going mad”

I opened my laptop back up bracing myself to see it smashed, but thankfully it wasn’t. I type in the website for Walford secrets and look at the home page. Right at the top was a small paragraph, not much longer than 2 sentences.

“You see it? The one about the closeted gay kid at college?”

For a moment my breathing stops. It’s like I can feel my lungs rattling in my chest, the burning sensation in my heart takes over and fills my eyes and every ounce of my body with so much fear.

“The-the what?” I try and stutter out words to act like everything is fine, but it’s not. This can’t be happening.

“Yeah look! Who do you think it is? I have like a million guesses I mean there’s that guy in sociology for a start and then there’s that kid that always hangs out with the girls during free periods and-” I have to cut her off.

“Yeah Whitney my uh- my mum’s calling me so I'll call you back later bye!” before she can get a word in I press end call and slam my phone face down just in case she calls back. I have to read this.

I stare at my laptop screen trying to force my eyes to read whatever the hell this says.

I finally build up the courage to read it.

**Sometimes I feel like I'm on a ferris wheel. One second I'm on top of the world and before you know it I’m at rock bottom, over and over every single day because a lot of my life is amazing but nobody knows I'm gay.**

**-m**

What the fuck.

This person, whoever they are, feels the exact same way I do. After all that time overthinking it there really was someone who felt the exact same? And they go to MY college? I had to email back to them. They’d left what I assumed to be a fake email as all it said was ‘cmetbhlenli@gmail.com’ probably just did a keyboard smash and left it.

I went straight to make a google account with a fake name too. I didn’t know what to call it I mean, do I just do a keyboard smash too?

I came back into the real world for a minute and started to pay attention to the music I had on in the background. The song was 500 miles by the proclaimers so I thought, well there’s my answer. I quickly made my email ‘fivehundredmiles@gmail.com’. I thought it sounded pretty ridiculous but hey, he’d never know it was me right?

I made the subject to be ‘hi’ because I had zero idea of what I was actually aiming to write here. I just knew I had to write something. I’d finally found someone who felt the same way I’ve been feeling for the past few years and I couldn’t just ignore that, even if that did mean setting up anonymous emails and talking to someone who could be a complete stranger about it. I was so tired of feeling lonely, it just felt like this was my chance to do something about it. So I did.

**Dear m,**

**I’m just like you.**

**For the most part my life is totally normal.**

**My dad was the shy, nerdy kid in high school with glasses and braces till he was 18.**

**My mum however, well she was the opposite. She was the most popular girl in school as I hear, all the boys swooning over her apparently. So really I couldn’t tell you how my parents ended up together, but I suppose I should be glad they did.**

**Then there’s my sister who I've grown to love as I've gotten older. Her cooking tests that sometimes though I mean, who wants to eat cupcakes with half the sugar that’s actually required?**

I pause again. I realise it’s probably not the best idea to give names and descriptions of all my friends because if this is someone from my college, they’ll most likely figure out instantly that it’s me, so I decide to leave that part out.

**So like I said, I’m just like you.**

**I have a totally, perfectly normal life.**

**Except I have one huge secret.**

**-h**

I decide to call myself H, as people used to call me that and it links with my surname so, it works I guess. I hover my curser over the send button for 5 minutes straight. So many questions go round and round in my head.

Is this a good idea?

What if he’s only joking?

What if he isn’t from my college and he’s some random guy that did it for a laugh?

I start telling myself, whats the worst that could happen? Which isn’t a great idea because let’s be real, many bad things could come from this. For a start I could get outed to the whole entire fucking college.

I hear my mum shout “Callum your dinner is ready!” up to me. I realise I either send it now or never at this point, and I decide on the first option because like I said, I can’t just let this chance go.

I find the strength somewhere in me to click send and watch the email vanish from my screen, knowing whoever the hell wrote that post has just received it and could very well be about to read it. My hands are trembling like a leaf as I close my laptop slowly and pick up my phone to head downstairs. I kept my phone with me in case this ‘m’ replied to me.

It felt like I had to drag my feet downstairs and into the kitchen to get my food because all I wanted to do was sit in my room and stare at that screen until I got a notificiation from my emails. I knew I wouldn’t be allowed so I did what I usually do, grabbed my plate and sat at the table with the rest of my family trying to make conversation with me. But right now I wasn’t in the mood to talk. I just sat there, waiting for an email. And it felt like hours.


End file.
